Total quality management

Template:Weasel Template:Buzzword Total quality management (TQM) is a business management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational processes. 'Total' in TQM implies that it is applied organization wide. 'Q' in caps brings in the paradigm of conceptual Quality and 'M' is the abbreviation for usual management with attendant functions. All types of organizations viz. manufacturing, education, hospitals, call centers, government, and service industries have reportedly deployed TQM., Even NASA space (and their science programs) does not remain insulated. Thareja and chhabra (2009) deployed it in a dance sequence to bring a losing game back into competition.

A Tool For Progress

TQM in-fact goes beyond "Meeting customer requirements" and their usual understanding of "Fit for purpose" in respect of products, processes or services that are embraced by the organization. That is it operates organization wide. Prior to TQM, quality testing is usually a norm towards controlling quality during the final phases of a product, process or service. If faults are found, then the supplies are held back; reworked or rejected. Additional costs were usually inevitable, to produce the needed quantity and Quality. TQM's aim to "Get it right first time every time" and in interim abate majority of such avoidable costs.

TQM seeks to identify the source of each defect; to prevent it from entering the final product. Using a simple iterative process TQM reinforces quality assurance to meet changes in products and services by way of improved effectiveness of their operational processes. The modus-operandi involves identifying the "root causes" for the most prevalent/costly defects and then implementing solutions to abate, avoid or remove them.

TQM is a Strategy

TQM essentially is a people dependent process. If people are cultured, matured is the organization. To derive full benefit of TQM, people in any organization should be synergized. Thus organizations are expected to maintain a company wide strategy that devolves responsibility to every employee for the quality of their work and the work of their team. TQM calls for bringing the core concept of quality to early transformatory processes, as Quality Guru William Edward Deming proposed. Deming's chain reaction advocates starting with Quality of initial design and further systemically operating on Total Quality principles to achieve excellence. When each input from raw materials through resources and design is processed to produce exceedingly and continually improved finished goods, TQM is said to be operational.

Costs

While use of TQM methodologies reduce the cost of failure e.g. scrap; factory (re-work) and customer dissatisfaction; it may, unavoidably, adds new costs for staff training, educating suppliers etc. However net benefit of implementing TQM is in the Quality, brand value, decreased time to market, higher customer confidence and return, and harmony, as is provided in an orchestra, or a piped piper Quality. Above all it facilitates sustainable development faster . It is asserted that business enterprises are always confronted with the challenge of increasing shareholder value, which includes both Quality and profitability.

Possible lifecycle

Today, total quality management is common in modern business, with a big accent on education, industry, army and so on. Many colleges are offering courses in TQM at graduate and undergraduate levels.

Abrahamson (1996) argued that fashionable management discourse such as quality circles tends to follow a lifecycle in the form of a bell curve, indicating a possible management fad. TQM normally takes a long 10 year period to administer change. It will take many years to mature. The decline is generally a result of commitment lacking at top management level.

American businesses have been noticing the Japanese improve their market share, assigned to Quality management. Quality control costs money, and gives due advantage at a cost. Americans organizations who have adapted TQM concepts since the 1980s have demonstrated its potential for excellence. With the efforts becoming more standardized and applied around things like the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Europe's EFQM Excellence Award and Japanese Internationally awarded Deming Prize in brief. There are several winners of this Deming Application Quality prize, and some of these have contributed to Quality through Energy conservation, environmental upgradation, signifying service to society, which is quite essential for any TQM implementer. Also benefit ISO 9000 series standard's implementation and Six Sigma in a journey to TQM.

References

• Bhat, V.: Total Quality Environmental Management. An ISO 14000 Approach. Westport, CT: Quorum, 1998
• GEMI (Global Environmental Management Aman Mohamed Initiative): Total Quality Environmental Management. The Primer. Washington D.C.: GEMI, 1993
• Thareja, Priyavrat and Mukul Chhabra :Strategic Total Quality Management (TQM) in a Group Dance 2009 (March). Quality World, Vol. 4, No. 3, March 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1498513

See also

• Quality management
• Quality management system